28 April 2013

I've recently decided that I am going to be good at photography one day.
You know, because I'm only good at being good at things I'm interested in.
(And not so good at being good at things I'm not interested in...)
So, as with many of my new obsessions, I have been researching nonstop.
And by researching, I mean scouring the internet for inspiration.

I recently came across the BEST photography blog I have ever seen, and had to share.
Her name is Angie Monson and she runs Simplicity Photography.
She is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
And her pictures are so epic, she may not even be human.
See for yourself:

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All of these photos were found via Pinterest and source back to her website: HERE

25 April 2013

Right now, my baby brothers are 12 and 13. Overnight they went from being worried about tractors, trampolines, and Santa Claus to being worried about girls, cologne, and middle school drama. In my head they will always be 5 and 6, and its funny...when I go through old pictures of them I'm shocked to remember just how dang cute they were! At the time I was the big sister that had to put up with their antics, and I guess I never took the time to notice...

First thing's first: solo mama and Laynah

Hey look, my mom and I were babies together! Haha

Growing up: Still sibling-less!

I remember I got so sad in 3rd grade once because the teacher called me an only child.

Then, after a couple bad news boyfriends...mama found the one!

We both fell in love with him right away.

After what seemed like an eternity later, I finally got a little brother.

And then after what seemed like a split second later, I got a second one!

When I wasn't too busy being annoyed by them, I think I really loved having them around.

Jacob at the age shown below was quite literally the sweetest boy that ever lived.

But Joshua...oh man he would go from zero to tantrum in no time flat.

Basically, he was (and still pretty much is) a little mini version of me.

He's always looked up to me in a way I've never really understood until recently.

Oh...and I guess we didn't believe in pants.

I once convinced them both that I was magic, and then let them believe it for years.

Somewhere along the line, Jacob (left) turned into the family clown with an attitude

and Joshua (right) remained the independent spitfire.

I'm really excited (and sometimes nervous! Dear High school: take it easy on my boys!) to see who they'll turn into next. I have a good feeling that, although they don't think I'm magic anymore, we will still be friends for a long long time to come.

23 April 2013

This weekend was spent shopping with my mother and sister in law while the boys were out camping, and I am half past obsessed with everything I got. I've been trying to not spend money on myself lately, but a thing or two at the beginning of a season feels so worth it! My only problem now is that so far, I can't talk myself out of wearing these every other day.

I have been dreaming of a straw cowgirl hat for sometime now, and finally found one at Charming Charlie. I feel like I am now officially prepared to experience Summer 2013. My attempts at taking a picture of it resulted in nothing but a handful of awkward selfies, so I made a demonstration beach outfit to show you what I mean.

22 April 2013

This weekend, all of the wards in our stake got together to see whose scouts were the manliest of mountain men! They all met up on a mountain, and after braving the elements that night, woke up ready to test their proficiency on skills such as trap setting, fire starting, shooting, knife throwing, etc. My husband, of course, led our boys to victory because he is the manliest of them all. Also, he told them that if they lost they were all walking home. There were no girls allowed, but my father in law got some great pictures:

Matthew, his brother, and his uncle...bright eyed and bushy tailed!

The manliest of breakfasts.

Doesn't my baby brother-in-law (Sawyer) have such a handsome smile??

The boys in mine and Matthew's ward, about ready to unleash their manliness.

Trap setting.

Sawyer: the master archer!

That boy is real good with a bow and arrow.

And finally, just a couple of mountain men discussing manly mountain things.

﻿It's so funny to see these pictures and then find yourself at church the next day, congratulating a bunch of nice boys in their Sunday best on being the manliest mountain men in the stake!

PS- While the mountain men are away, the girls will...shop. I must share my spoils soon!

18 April 2013

Sometimes I talk to my patients about their lives when they were my age, and many of them say that they wore a dress or a skirt every single day. These days, skirts have been replaced with skinny jeans and dresses are saved for special occasions. For this week's Throwback Thursday, let's re-live some of my princess moments with a couple of my favorite dresses.

1. A few years ago I found one of my mom's bridesmaid dresses when I was going through her closet. I liked the soft pink and flowy fabric so much, I tried it on and initiated a vintage desert photo shoot. It just felt like the right thing to do.

2. My senior year prom dress! Buying a prom dress is probably the WORST form of evil for a Mormon girl in high school. I couldn't be picky because I knew I'd be lucky if I ever found a dress with sleeves, let alone one in the color I wanted. My mom and I shopped for about 10 hours and drove all over the place trying to find a modest dress...I remember she wanted to find one as badly as I did! We were both in tears when it looked like we'd be going home empty handed, but then we found this one at the very last store possible. I loved it!

Please pretend my face isn't cray in this picture.
I just like that it shows off the detail of my dress.

While we're on the subject of prom and Throwback Thursday, how about this picture...would it blow your mind if I told you that this was EVERY SINGLE girl in my graduating class? Yeah, I guess you could say I went to a small high school. There was a grand total of 32 people in the class of 2009.

PROOF. The last row on the right is cut off, but you get the picture. You'll have to forgive me, I'm actually stealing these pictures from my friends' facebook albums right now haha.

Now on to the last dress!

3. Would it be of any surprise to anybody if I said the last dress that made me feel like a princess was my wedding dress? Except this time I had a real life castle and a real life prince to go with it! So epic.

﻿

I think the lighting in this cake picture makes the details pop out a little.

I wish I had told my photographer that I wanted a picture of my favorite detail of my dress: the piping/sequins on the left hip.﻿

16 April 2013

Not only because of what happened in Boston, but because I handed over control of my emotions to another person. It's probably silly to put my own personal struggles in the same category as the horrifying event that happened in Boston, but there you have it. Yesterday was stupid.

12 April 2013

AKA a long winded post about the butterflies and disappointments. Complete with wedding day pictures, because those things were expensive and must make themselves useful.

So I got a new job, in a new place, with new people who kinda lose their minds when I tell them I'm married. They tell me it was a mistake. They ask me if I'm 15 years old. They click their tongues and say "just because you like somebody, doesn't mean you should go marry them." These are all very hard to respond to.

Here's the story: I met a boy, we fell in love much more quickly than either of us anticipated, we decided to get married, and in a few years we might start having babies. I don't understand why this is so outrageous, and how all the highschool kids runnin around getting pregnant these days is the norm. Am I young? Yes. Was it fast? Yes. Am I so obsessed with my husband that it's hard to see me as more than just a little girl with a crush sometimes? Maybe.

The thing is, there's just a lot to be obsessed about. I learn more and more about him as time goes on, and each time I thaaank thank thank my lucky stars that with all of the stupid decisions I have made in my life, letting him get away wasn't one of them. When we're together it feels like everything is going to be okay. When we're not together it feels like part of me is no longer present, and that part of me has the audacity to go about it's business as usual. I understand the term 'better half' now. Sometimes I look at him and am convinced that Heavenly Father created him for no other purpose than to help me realize my full potential. He's just a natural at making me a better person.

Nevertheless, I feel like you cant write a post about marriage without admitting that there have been cursings and smashings and crashings and even a mention of the D word once. I guess those things are to be expected when two strong-willed people join paths. Although, sometimes the reason why I'm mad at him is because he makes it so hard TO be mad at him. For example...last night we were fighting and he said "When I said blank, what I really meant was blank. Can't you be patient with me while I try to learn how to communicate with you?" Dang. That's hard to respond to when you're not done being mad. (For the record, my mature response was "Sshh! We are fighting right now.")

﻿

All of a sudden we make up and I don't even remember how, but he is my whole world again.

10 April 2013

At first it was hard not to get all judgy, but then I just admitted to myself that I was impressed beyond measure and started being secretly upset that she doesn't have a fashion blog I can stalk. Today she actually wore yoga pants and all I've been thinking about is how interesting it is that she has made looking nice such a strong trait of hers that it caught me off guard to see her in yoga pants. The big question is, how do girls like her do it? (Kendi and Sydney...I'm looking at you)

Today my husband answered that question. He said "Priorities, baby...we all have them, and one of her biggest ones is looking nice, every day." (Hubs knows this girl from high school, and can attest to the fact that she has simply always been this way) That's deep though, right?? My next question was "What are my priorities?" What would someone think that my priorities are, after watching me from a distance? While I believe that looking nice is necessary for multiple reasons, I don't know if I'd want that to be my number one priority. Of course I had to make a list of things that are important to me, and here they are:

PRIORITY ONE: Getting things done, when they need to be done. In other words: stop procrastinating. This one is so broad that its hard to really set a specific goal, but I guess making to-do lists would be a good start.

PRIORITY TWO: Nailing a bedtime routine that works for both Matthew and I. I think that having scripture study and getting ready for bed right after dinner as opposed to right before bed would be helpful. Also, it would be really cool if I could stick to something like this.

PRIORITY THREE: Practice being kind. This one shouldn't be that hard, but for me it is I guess. You know...smile more, ask people about their lives, give sincere compliments.

Have you seen that sticky note method for habit building floating around Pinterest?

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, and 2 days to break it.
Challenge. Accepted.

I'll just finish by saying that even though I didn't list it as a priority, putting time into your appearance every day certainly wont hurt anything ;) Thanks for the inspiration, all you full time fabulous ladies out there!

09 April 2013

I was looking around the internet for old pictures the other day, when I remembered MySpace. You know... the one that was cool BEFORE Facebook? I remember when making your MySpace page pretty was the thing to do, and when friendships would be in jeopardy if you didn't include someone in your Top 8 haha. It was there that I found a gold mine of awkward high school memories.

WE GOT THE GOOD:

WE GOT THE BAD:

AND WE GOT THE JUST PLAIN WEIRD:

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You're welcome. I'm pretty sure that just made us closer. Now I'd encourage you to see if you can remember your MySpace password, save the pictures worth saving, and wash your hands of the whole thing if you haven't already.

Now that you've seen the awkwardness of my youth unfold before you, I will now reveal 7 facts about myself that you may not have known before. I think you're ready. This comes in perfect timing with a versatile blogger award that I was tagged in :)

I was tagged by DancingWithDragQueens! It's funny, because I have always said that I would love to have a drag queen teach me their makeup skills. You gotta admit, it's usually on point. So I stumbled across her blog and bazinga! This girl's makeup is flawless. I just barely started following her blog, but I am already the biggest fan of her tutorials. I think maybe if I read enough, I might pick up a few of her tricks!

HERE ARE THE RULES:1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award and link back to their blog.2. Tell 7 things about yourself3. Select 15 blogs that you recently discovered or follow regularly to nominate. Let those blogs know that you nominated them.

So here go my seven things!

1. I'm gonna start by explaining those just plain weird pictures up there. You know the fancy one with my hair on top of my head and every necklace I own draped over me? Well my friend and I used to flip through vogue until we found ads that were so weird we had to recreate them. Here's an example:

This is probably the fastest and easiest way to start a collection of awkward pictures. I wish I could find the ad that I was recreating up there, but from the looks of it...it was fierce.

2. The other weird photo from MySpace (the one with the tiara/bow/pink and teal eyeshadow) well, that one was from a talent show. A Lip Sync, to be more specific. Nobody in my highschool had a lot of talent, so every year people would pick songs to lip sync and perform to. That picture is from the day I was crowned "Queen of the Night" after performing Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with a few of my friends. As you can see, I nailed it.

3. This is the part where I have to actually start thinking of facts about myself. Let's see...I once tried to chemically straighten my hair and FREAKED OUT once all the chemicals were on my head and rinsed it all off. It's okay every now and then to straighten my hair, but I wouldn't be me without curls.

4. I am a Nurse Tech, and my favorite thing about my job is the weird/gross/beautiful/interesting things that I get to see on a daily basis. I have seen babies be born, I have seen people die, and last memorial day I had the chance to talk to a man who was in the Navy and on the scene right after Pearl Harbor was bombed. The number one lesson I have learned is that we NEED TO EXERCISE. It's absolutely crucial. You don't want to know what happens to your body later in life if you stop using it now.

5. I think I have a super addictive personality because I am constantly becoming obsessed with different things. 9 times out of 10 it just kinda fades away, but in the beginning I can never tell, so I just have to wait and see if it lasts before I buy anything or do anything crazy, haha. For example, I once spent every waking moment researching and learning about hermit crabs and their habitats when a friend gave me hers. In the beginning I wanted to learn how to crochet hemp nets for them to climb on, have changing tables with various shells for them to choose from, and basically just dedicate every penny I earned and every minute I had towards them. That one faded away rather quickly.

6. I currently think, and have always believed, that I was born to be a mother. It goes beyond the "Oh I think it'd be nice to have kids one day" kinda thing. I already feel like I am in love with my future children even though I've never met them.

7. I am slowly discovering, with surprise, that I am an introvert! I have always thought I was an extrovert because I am very open with those who I feel comfortable with (blog friends included, I guess) but I am now realizing that I have way too many introvert tendencies..Being alone makes me happy, I have been known to take myself on dates to the movies or restaurant's, and for some reason answering the front door makes me so uncomfortable.

Well I am running out of the time I had to write this post so I am just going to end it right here and tag ANYONE who wants to participate. Seriously. Consider yourself tagged.﻿